Division Chief Shima Kōsaku Volume 13 (End of Division Chief Arc)

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Division Chief Shima Kо̄saku Volume 11

Folks, we’ve made it. We are now done with the Division Chief arc of the Shima Kōsaku series. With this volume we’ve finished 30 total volumes in this series and finished everything that came out from when it started in 1983 to the beginning of 2002, so nearly 20 years of real-world time. And we’ve reached the point where Shima joins upper management as a member of the board of directors.

Here’s where we are on the big chart of this whole series.
Shima Kо̄saku release chart

I updated this a bit from last time to include the extra stuff like the “One Elegant Day” extra volume about Hirokane-sensei going to movies and restaurants with Shima and the New Century in Asia chapters and Charge Sheet chapters which aren’t regular numbered chapters. We’ve covered a lot of years but this is around 30 volumes out of 88 and the series is still going. Plus 21 volumes of prequels and also there’s some spinoffs. So who knows if we ever catch all the way up, if we do it’ll take a while. I’m not planning to just marathon through the series just to do allll those volumes, I’m just gonna go with the flow and keep going with this series so long as it’s still enjoyable. I hope you all keep it up with me and the rest of our team here at HWMN through that time. We’ve been working on this since August 2021 so it’s been quite a journey so far, nearly 4 years to get to this point.

Aaanyhow, this volume concludes the Division Chief arc. This is the end of a lot of story arcs but plenty of them keep going into the next volume. As usual I’m gonna try not to spoil it but there’s lots of emotional and exciting things going on in this volume as well as a bunch of new plot lines getting started. Next volume is Managing Director Shima Kōsaku volume 1, which largely functions as an epilogue of the Division Chief series and then the last 2 chapters really get into the new arc that starts with Shima in charge of Hatsushiba’s branch in China. There are three “director arcs” which are all fairly short. Managing Director is 8 volumes, Executive Director is 6 volumes, and Senior Director is 5 volumes. So all three of them together are 19 volumes. Then after that is the President arc, the Chairman arc, the Senior Advisor arc, and then the current one that’s still coming out, the Outside Director arc. Also the number of pages per volume goes down after the Managing Director arc by 20-40 pages so we may be able to get through them a bit faster. But we’ll see how things go. I’ve had a lot of IRL problems lately so I can’t spend a ton of time on manga. But we’ll see how it goes! I’m already starting work on the Managing Director arc which I’m sure you’ll all enjoy if you’ve stuck with the series this far. Please let more folks know about this series, I hope more people discover it as we keep going. It’s really great and I love seeing people’s reactions to it. I don’t think there’s any other series out there quite like it.

Also, we have a Discord! Come hang out and talk about manga. https://discord.gg/Nw45rfJYZF

Division Chief Shima Kо̄saku Volume 13 (Ch138-150)
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3-Gatsu no Lion (March Comes in Like a Lion) 213

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Hey everybody, here’s the new chapter, chapter 213! Maybe Umino-sensei will go back to doing one chapter a month for a while now, who knows. The battle between Kiriyama and Shimada continues! This one has some great imagery.
In the meantime, I’m still working on Shima volume 13. I’ve got like 4 chapters left to translate now so I’m making my way through it as I have time/energy.

Also, we have a Discord! Come hang out and talk about manga. https://discord.gg/Nw45rfJYZF

3-Gatsu no Lion 213
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The JOJOLands Ch. 23

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The JOJOLands 23

Hey everybody, here’s chapter 23. This one was done with a digital raw like we do most of the time. We’re still having lots of problems with getting early raws so I dunno how often that will happen or when we’ll need to use physical raws or if we won’t be able to get an early raw at all. So working on this has become a lot more stressful and on top of that I’ve had a lot of problems in my life outside this hobby lately which I’m pretty depressed about. Anyhow, it’s a good chapter and I hope you all enjoy it. In the meantime I’m still working on Division Chief Shima Kosaku volume 13, and a little less than half way through translating it now. So yeah that’s it. Next month’s chapter comes out on the 18th Japan time as well. Generally speaking the magazine comes out on the 19th every month. I dunno why these sometimes come out early by a day or two it’s pretty weird.

We have a Discord! Come hang out and talk about manga. https://discord.gg/Nw45rfJYZF

Edit 3/18/2025: We updated this to use a higher res digital magazine raw based on the official Chinese version. Ultimately we’re going to replace that with the volume version

The JOJOLands Ch. 23
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Division Chief Shima Kōsaku Volume 12

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Division Chief Shima Kо̄saku Volume 11

OK, finally, here we are, volume 12! It’s been about 3 months since the last chapter, which is kind of a while, largely due to the fact that I was working on finishing the end of Kokou no Hito, those 3-Gatsu chapters, and then all the The JOJOLands stuff including volume 5. But now finally this is all done. And with this, we have just 1 volume left in the Division Chief arc. We’re actually into the final bunkoban now (The bunkobans have more chapters crammed into fewer books). And then we’ll be off to Managing Director Shima Kōsaku.

You can kind of tell when you read it but this is the finale of a lot or else the setup for the finale for a lot. As this period marks a major checkpoint in Shima’s life. They talk about it in the volume, but very few salarymen reach all the way to being a director. A lot either retire at the division chief level or else leave the company even in old age. The Division Chief arc goes from 1992 to 2002, making it the longest arc in terms of time it took to come out. Though I should also mention a lot of Managing Director volume 1 is a sort of epilogue to the Division Chief arc so maybe I should be waiting to talk about all this. But we’re almost there! I started working a bit on volume 13 and I’ll try to get it done a bit sooner. I should have time as everything else is caught up at the moment. I hope you enjoy it!

Also, we have a Discord! Come hang out and talk about manga. https://discord.gg/Nw45rfJYZF

Division Chief Shima Kо̄saku Volume 12 (Ch138-150)
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3-Gatsu no Lion (March Comes in Like a Lion) 212

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Ok here’s chapter 212! This is more of the sort of thing that was going on in chapter 211. I’m very exhausted from working nonstop everyday for the last while. Uh, so the next chapter is coming out later sometime, I dunno when. Doesn’t seem to be next issue. In the meantime we’re finishing up Shima volume 12. Sooo later.

Also, we have a Discord! Come hang out and talk about manga. https://discord.gg/Nw45rfJYZF

3-Gatsu no Lion 212
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The JOJOLands Ch. 22

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The JOJOLands 22

Hey ya’ll, here’s this month’s chapter. For this chapter we scanlated it from a physical raw because that’s the only raw we could get early this month. Which may happen more in the future probably because we’ve had a number of problems getting early raws recently. Possibly we won’t be able to do it early at all depending on how things go but we’re continuing to do that as much as a means of combating snipers, which always happens with this series, much to my personal frustration. Anyhow if you noticed it looks a bit different than usual, that’s why. We all worked really hard on this chapter. I worked nearly 24 hours straight on it. So I hope you all enjoy.

Besides this, go check out our scanlation of volume 5, I also worked super hard on that. I’m in the middle of translating Shima volume 12, which I should finally have time to finish now after all the stuff from the last few weeks. Really looking forward to doing that and maybe some other projects where I can do at whatever pace I want and don’t need to cram the whole thing into one day.

We have a Discord! Come hang out and talk about manga. https://discord.gg/Nw45rfJYZF

Edit 3/18/2025: We updated this to use a higher res digital magazine raw based on the official Chinese version. Ultimately we’re going to replace that with the volume version.

The JOJOLands Ch. 22
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The JOJOLands Volume 5

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Hey everybody, I hope you’re having a good new year. Man we’re 5 volumes in already. Time sure flies. As usual this is mainly just a higher resolution version of the existing chapters with more image on the tops and bottoms and slightly less on the sides. And as usual this is done with scans of the physical raws which are way higher resolution than the digital ones. There’s also a handful of pages with new screentones and more blood spatter added and some things like that but they’re hard to notice if you’re not comparing the pages directly. I mentioned this in the last The JOJOLands post but also the name of the banker “Mack” has been changed to “Yokohama” and Acca Howler is now the 8th head of the Howler family rather than the 76th. Also a bunch of the numbers having to do with the loans and such changed for some reason.

This compiles up to the chapter that came out just a month and a half ago so there’s not much buffer between the magazine and volume chapters now. The next one is scheduled for just “Spring 2025”. The next chapter, which is chapter 22, is set to come out on the 18th Japan time. We’ll try to get it out as soon as we can as usual but stuff with raws has been more difficult lately so we’ll see what happens. In the meantime since Kokou no Hito’s been finished I’m going back to working on Shima volume 12. And there’s a new 3-Gatsu no Lion chapter coming out in the next issue of Young Animal that comes out on the 24th Japan time.

Edit 1/16/2024: There was a page missing somehow, that’s fixed now.

Also, we have a Discord! Come hang out and talk about manga. https://discord.gg/Nw45rfJYZF

The JOJOLands Volume 5 (Ch. 17-20)
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Kokou no Hito (The Climber) Volume 14-17 (End)

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Okay soooo here it is, the rest! I mentioned this in the last Kokou no Hito post but there wasn’t much left and now it’s all done. These all got done quickly because I cleaned and redrew all the way to the end at the beginning of December and then spent the next few weeks typesetting. Also because they just don’t have a lot of text so it’s less work overall on a per-volume basis. After that we were just waiting for all the QCers to check it, and they all got finished together at the same time. So here it is, our last release for the year, most likely. And also the end of this series. I’m really glad we got it all done. I really like this series and I think 7 months from beginning to end for a fix-up, refresh, type dealie is a good amount. It’s not so much that it dragged on and on for something that’s not a new series but also not so short that we’re not sure it was all the best quality we could make it. I hope you all enjoyed. And if anyone was waiting until we were done to read it all, go right ahead.

(Oh I should mention, some of the chapter titles are different from the old scanlations because I was scanlating from the magazine version originally for a lot of volumes 14-17 because the volumes weren’t out yet. And then Sakamoto-sensei changed the titles in the the volumes. For a few they changed just because I thought a different word or phrase made a better translation.)

I’ve been focusing mainly on this the last month or so to get it all the way to the end. Now I’m gonna get back to Shima volume 12 and we’re working on The JOJOLands v5. I have a couple other ideas of new projects to work on but I’m trying not to spend too much time doing scanlating. A lot of these projects, I’m doing most of it on my own so I don’t want to overload myself. But it feels good to get a project done like this. I’ve thought about doing other “refresh projects” too but every one of them would take longer than Kokou no Hito given this series is fairly low on text so I dunno if I wanna jump into that right now. Anyhow, I’ll be doing something. I hope you all enjoy the series and you have a happy new year.

Also, we have a Discord! Come hang out and talk about manga. https://discord.gg/Nw45rfJYZF

Kokou no Hito Volume 14 (Ch. 133-142)
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Kokou no Hito Volume 15 (Ch. 143-152)
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Kokou no Hito Volume 16 (Ch. 153-162)
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Kokou no Hito Volume 17 (Ch. 163-170)
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3-Gatsu no Lion (March Comes in Like a Lion) 211

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Here ya go, everyone. One more 3-Gatsu no Lion chapter for the road right at the end of the year. This one is also great like the last bunch with the emotional journey of Shimada and Kiriyama continuing.

We’re almost done with the rest of Kokou no Hito now. Those are being checked. Besides that I’m going back to work in Shima and we’re working on The JOJOLands volume 5. I hope ya’ll are having happy holidays and have a happy new year!

Also, we have a Discord! Come hang out and talk about manga. https://discord.gg/Nw45rfJYZF

3-Gatsu no Lion 211
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Kokou no Hito (The Climber) Volume 13

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Okay, here’s volume 13. We’re honestly pretty close to the end now. It’s probably obvious reading it but a lot of pages have no text at all and a lot that do have text have not much. Sakamoto-sensei really comes into his style of expressing things very purely with visuals here at a more extreme level than he did earlier on where it was just an occasional panel or page and now it’s more than half of them. Also I’m including all of the color pages here which I think weren’t included in all the old releases. I still had them then but I think they sometimes included them and sometimes just sort of ignored them and didn’t put them in the release. These are all from when I bought the physical Young Jump magazines at the time because there was no digital version. Also this is the last volume that was originally done by OMFGG scans, which stopped responding to me and existing at a group all together shortly after they released volume 13. So past this point we’re doing a fixed up version of the bunch of volumes done by Easy-Going Scans.

This is the point in the story where Buntarō has finally established a happy home life where he’s not escaping to mountains to get away from the misery of the rest of his life but then he’s being pulled in the opposite direction of finally getting his chance to climb K2 which has been his life’s goal up to that point. He’s dealing with the inner conflict of passion VS family. Or maybe one “home” VS another “home”. Or two different identities. The identity that wants to feel free and experience all these powerful things on mountains and an identity wanting to be with people and form emotional connections with them. I made sure every time it’s in the background I typeset the “Climb the number one mountain in the world” sign which kind of looms as this symbol of his “passion” identity and past self from when he was totally alone.

So our scanlation of this series, or “fix-up” or “re-scanlation”, is almost done. I mentioned in previous posts I went ahead and cleaned/typeset all the way to the end because it was easier due to the lack of text. Now I’m almost done typesetting, too. I’m in the middle of volume 17 now, which is the last one. Mainly I’m just waiting on the QC team to check these over and we’ll be all done. I’m not gonna rush them to do it but I wanted to get my part done and then I can go back to working on other stuff. But volumes 14, 15, and 16 are being checked now, and I’ll probably finish typesetting volume 17 sometime in the next few days, so the rest of the series will probably be released in not *too* long. Once I finish typesetting v17 I’m gonna go back to translating Shima volume 12. Besides that, we also have the new 3-Gatsu no Lion chapter this week and we’re working on The JOJOLands volume 5. So I’ll definitely continue to be busy for a bit. I hope you all enjoy!

Also, we have a Discord! Come hang out and talk about manga. https://discord.gg/Nw45rfJYZF

Kokou no Hito Volume 13 (Ch. 123-132)
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